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As a mid-30s guy, I pin this entirely on the Tinderfication of dating, starting in the early 2010s and increasing since. Dating, even if once not exactly easy, also wasn't arduous. OKC was even kind of fun; a thoughtful message would get attention, and people could and would read your profile.
Tinder shifted this to a pure meat market. Particularly, it materialized a hierarchy in conventional hotness, both by attributing a score to individuals based on the extent of how much others engage with them (not novel; OkC did something similar even early on, and people implicitly do this in real life as well) but, critically, in heavily favoring the presentation as possible mates the people at the top of the hierarchy through the primary channel of interaction (swipes). That is qualitatively different than the past and generates the winner-take-all dynamic you mention.
This is even more pernicious than it seems at first glance, though. There's kind of an evaporative cooling that occurs in dating. The people who are most suitable for long term partnerships gradually disappear from the dating market, because almost by definition they enter long term relationships. The most attractive men are no worse in that suitability, outside of attractiveness, than the least attractive men. I'd even guess they're on average better long term partners outside the superficial aspects. But the ones that are presented to women have been heavily picked over, to the point where the vast majority of those remaining on dating apps are lemons. And when a woman hops on Tinder, she's not typically swiping through hundreds of profiles to get to the less polluted pool. She's just seeing the top of the stack, which is men whose profiles generate a high level of engagement but who for some reason have not left the dating market. Some may be just generally bad; some may be unconsciously disinterested in a relationship; some may have personality traits that make them a bad prospect. The point is that women see highly sought after men who aren't good long term prospects.
This explanation has the advantage of describing both single straight men's experiences ("I never get any engagement") and women's ("the men I meet online are cheaters or liars or commitment-phobic"). Attractive people with long term relationship orientation still pair off with each other and wonder what all the fuss is about, though attractive women had to deal with a bunch of bad apples to get to that point.
Can it explain the decline in gender relations? IIRC something like 40% of new marriages today originate online, and a larger population has been on it. Probably the majority of daters have exposure to this dynamic. Moreover, the existence of it as an option has effects. Serendipitous meetings in real life are becoming more discouraged (e.g. meeting at work, once the first or second most common way of meeting, is now heavily frowned upon up to and including legal penalties). It possibly makes some people less open to meeting people in their social circles, as it invites a comparison to the more attractive people available online.
Why would it be an unconscious preference? If you're the hypothetical 'Chad Thundercock' and just want to get laid, Tinder's providing you with ample opportunities to get your dick wet and generally working as intended. Honestly, so long as Chad Thundercock is direct and clear with his intentions on just getting laid I don't think that's even a bad result for the stack.
The main issue/corruptive agent are people who are working on false pretenses. The hypothetical 'Lovebomber' who presents as down for a long-term relationship for 3-4 dates then bails, who undermines the sincerity of the actually longterm-orientated (and can, frankly, lead to some bizarre expectations where longterm-minded girls assume that their 'sprinting' effort and 110% agreeability is something that an actual longterm prospect is gonna emulate)
There are plenty of men who not only say but think they're looking for a long term relationship but are in practice disinclined to them. Maybe even highly picky guys fall into this category.
The experience for women is still crappy: date someone for a bit, get really excited for them, but a month later get cut off because he wanted to look for something new, even though the breakup was highly predictable given his previous behavior.
I agree that if someone is very clear about their intentions, there's no reasonable claim of anyone having been wronged. A single stack intermingles "hot casual stud" and "great long term partner" and confuses the derived signal, but simply segregating on intention would address part of that. The issue comes when people looking for long term things end up deceived: since a majority of women do mostly want something long term, more guys list themselves as primarily long term than would if most women primarily wanted casual sex. Self deception also plays a significant role here: it's often a combination of a guy deceiving himself about what he's looking for and a woman aggressively ignoring the telltale signs of deception, because of desire.
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